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Fang, The
The Fang is the famed citadel of the Space Wolves Space Marine Chapter that was built at the direction of the Primarch Leman Russ during the early days of the Great Crusade. This massive and cunningly constructed stronghold serves as the Chapter's home and fortress-monastery and is located on the icy Death World of Fenris. At the centre of the vast plateau of the northern polar continent of Asaheim there is a range of mountains whose peaks are said to rise above the atmosphere. The tallest of all lies in the very middle of the range, dwarfing its fellows and rising like a single gnarled tooth above those that surround it. This peak, and the Chapter fortress that is built upon and within it, is The Fang. Despite being almost universally referred to as "The Fang," the Vlka Fenryka (Space Wolves) refer to their fortress-monastery simply as the Aett. In Juvjk, the local Fenrisian dialect of Low Gothic, this means "clan-home", "fireplace" or "den". Exterior of the Fang of the Space Wolves Chapter]] Built during the Great Crusade, the fortress-citadel of the mighty VI Space Marine Legion is one of the greatest bastions of the Imperium, reckoned the mightiest beyond the Imperial Palace on Terra itself. Vast beyond imagining, a single peak rears up on the horizon, as if the core of the world of Fenris had been shoved through its mantle into a terrifying, unmatched pinnacle, a conical mountain-mass soaring up into the darkening sky. Its flanks are sheer and snow-clad on jagged shelves of rock, glossy with ancient, undisturbed ice. In every direction, lesser summits crowd the view, clustering close to the broken skyline in the shadow of the Great One, the Shoulder of the Allfather; the volda hamarrki, the World Spine. Against the gathering dark of the dwindling atmosphere, tiny lights shine at the distant summit. They mark the habitation of the Sky Warriors, the abode of the demigods, itself a tiny fraction of the bulk of that vast peak. The inhabitants of that place, whether kaerl (armed Chapter Serfs or Thralls as the Space Wolves call them) or Astartes, called it the Aett. To the rest of the galaxy, awe-struck by half-snatched legends of Leman Russ' fortress and never likely to see it, it was just The Fang. Many times during its long history it has stood inviolable whilst the forces of disorder dashed themselves against it. The Fang is clad in armour of immense thickness and strength and is cloaked by Void Shields more powerful than those found on even the most mighty of the Emperor's warships. Dark shafts cut miles into the mountainside conceal potent defence lasers that are capable of blasting apart even the most heavily armoured spacecraft. These huge weapons are as ancient as the Chapter itself, the geothermal reactors that power them testament to the precious technology from the distant past. The peaks closest to The Fang itself had entered the legends of the Vlka Fenryka, etched on their communal consciousness since the Allfather had led them there in the half-remembered twilight of the Chapter's Founding. To the south was Asfryk, white-sided and blunt, the Cloudtearer. To the east were soaring Friemiaki and Tror, the Brothers of Thunder. To the west was bleak Krakgard, the dark peak where heroes were burned, and to the north were Broddja and Ammagrimgul, the guardians of the Hunter’s Gate through which Space Wolves Aspirants passed to take the Trials of Passage. The ways between the peaks were treacherous and known only to those who had trodden the paths as Aspirants. All were scarred with precipitous drops and deep crevasses. Some hunt-ways were built on solid stone, whereas others were on bridges of ice that would crumble to nothing with the first application of weight. Some led true, taking the hunter from the clefts in the shadow of the summits down to the plains where the prey dwelt; others led nowhere but into darkness, to the caves that riddled the bowels of the ancient landscape, full of nothing but ice-gnawed bones and despair. The Fang possesses two external gates known as the Bloodfire Gate and Sunrising Gate which connect to the opposite ends of the internal region of the fortress known as the Hould. The two portals are high up the sheer sides of the mountain, and stand at the termination of massive ridges between the peaks, allowing movement up towards them from the surrounding highlands. The ridges run up to the citadel gates like huge causeways of stone, each kilometres wide and worn smooth by the endless gnawing of the winds. In the half-forgotten millennia past, the Allfather and Leman Russ had walked on that same stone, planning the construction of the Aett together, seeing how the tortured landscape of Asaheim could be made to house the greatest fortress outside Terra. Russ had made it so that the two Gates overlooked entirely bare approaches, such that any massed advance on them would provoke a slaughter. The Gates themselves were wide enough for a hundred men to walk through abreast. The colossal structure of Adamantium, granite and Ceramite bristles with linked Bolter turrets, rocket-launchers and static Plasma Cannons. The firepower collected there is vast, the kind of arsenal more suited to an Imperial Navy Battle Group than a land-bound citadel. Across the entire structure stretches the citadel's Void Shields, glistening faintly as the oblique sunlight slants through clouds of burning engine oil. Shrine of Harek Ironhelm Situated on the site of the Great Wolf's duel with Magnus the Red in the 32nd Millennium during the First Battle of The Fang, located on the flank of The Fang is the Tomb of Harek Ironhelm, a place of pilgrimage to test the endurance of the faithful and to serve as a memorial to Ironhelm's unwavering devotion to the Emperor. It was also constructed to serve as a memorial to his blindness. Never again would the Space Wolves allow themselves to be drawn into a war not of their own making. This sombre crypt serves as a shrine to the memory of that noble Wolf Lord who battled the Chapter's gravest foe. Whenever an Aspirant Rune Priest undergoes his ordeal of initiation, he must first make a pilgrimage to this mighty edifice and call upon the spirit of Harek Ironhelm. It is said that the spirit of the fallen Great Wolf appears to warn the Aspirant against trusting visions granted by Chaos. This was the lesson the Space Wolves learned from the First Battle of The Fang, and they would use it to further enhance their skill in defence of the Emperor's realm. Docking Platforms Far up near the very peak of The Fang are located the Docking Platforms where the Chapter's many aircraft can take off and land. Reaching just beyond Fenris' atmospherem The Fang's docking platforms can even service the Chapter's warships. Void Shield Array The upper reaches of The Fang feature Void Shield arrays of incredible strength. Drawing power from the Geothermal Reactors beneath The Fang the Void Shield array is capable of repelling the firepower of entire fleets, making it virtually impossible for an enemy to attack The Fang from orbit with any hope of success. Defensive Batteries The Fang's mighty flanks bristle with massive defensive batteries capable of throwing shells, torpedoes and directed energy beams at anything foolish enough to come within range. The Forge Hills Situated on the lower slopes of The Fang near to the great cliffs that drop down to the battering ocean surf is the Forge Hills. It is a great stretch of foundries, smiths, anvils and workshops where the Chapter Iron Priests and Thralls work under the open elements, harnessing the harsh nature of Fenris into weapons of adamantium and titansteel. The Heart Forge Mightiest of the forges found in the Forge Hills is the Heart Forge. An ancient anvil upon which some of the greatest weapons and relics of the Chapter have been forged, it was here that Arjac Rockfist worked to restore the Axe Morkai before the Kraken Spawn attacked the Forge Hills. Interior of The Fang Valgard The Fang is vast beyond comprehension and a huge network of tunnels, shafts and chambers riddled the highest levels of the peak. Even so, the fortress proper is dwarfed by the full bulk of the mountain, and only the very upper reaches had ever been delved into habitations. For the most part, the Space Wolves dwell underground, their lairs hidden under kilometres of solid rock. Only at the very pinnacle of the mountain, the terminus of the level known as the Valgard, does artificial structures break the surface in any quantity. It is there that the fortress' landing stages and docking berths had been constructed, clustered around massive towers that thrust from sheer cliffs hundreds of metres tall. Ancient drive mechanisms power service shafts a kilometre deep, hauling materiel and wargear from depots in the heart of the mountain and delivering them to the transports waiting in the hangars. These lifts are always busy, a testament to the restless spirit of the Space Wolves and their ceaseless voyaging in the sea of stars. High up at the summit of the Valgard, spacecraft can blast off from launch platforms and large landing bays where Thunderhawk gunships mingle with the Chapter's few remaining Stormbirds. Here even starships the size of the Chapter fleet's Hlaupa-class Escorts, heavily armed variants of the Imperial Navy’s ''Cobra''-class Destroyers, can dock. Vessels of such size would not normally have been able to dock within a planetary atmosphere, but the sheer altitude of the Valgard landing stages made it possible for them to make planetfall on Fenris. Chamber of the Annulus The Chamber of the Annulus is high up in the pinnacle of the Fang, in the Valgard near the very summit of the vast fortress, surrounded by a seam of pure granite. It had been one of the first halls to be delved from the living rock by the Terran geomancers brought to Fenris to establish the VI Legion in the early days of the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium. In that age, Tech-adepts had been able to level the very mountains and raise them up again, to shape the continents and quell the tumults of the Death World’s seasonal upheavals. They could have made Fenris a paradise if they had so chosen, and it was only on the Primarch's orders that the planet was never altered from its fearsome character. Russ wished for his homeworld to remain the great proving ground of warriors, a crucible in which its humanity would be tested and honed forever. So, as it had happened, only one mountain out of the hundreds on Asaheim had been changed from its primeval form, its chambers hollowed out and wrought by ancient devices of forgotten, terrible power. Now the knowledge brought by those long-dead Artificers is fading fast, and no citadel of comparable strength and majesty will ever be built again within the Realm of the Emperor. The Fang is unique in the Imperium, the product of a genius that is slowly bleeding out of the galaxy as humanity stumbles and unlearns the lessons of the past. The Chamber of the Annulus is where the Great Wolf and the Wolf Lords of the Chapter gather during councils of war. The twelve jarls will gather round the Grand Annulus, the huge circle on the floor of the chamber with the sigils of the Great Companies inscribed on its panels of stone. Fleshmaker Laboratorium For a time in the 32nd Millennium, the Space Wolves held the hope of eventually creating Successor Chapters to spread the seed of Russ across the galaxy. To this end, high in the Valgard had been established a biomedical research installation known amongst the Space Wolves as the Fleshmaker Laboratorium. This laboratorium was under the supervision of Thrar "Wyrmblade" Hraldir, who was a highly skilled Wolf Priest during the 32nd Millennium. He was instrumental in the creation of the genetic alteration program known as The Tempering -- the effort to expunge the genetic deficiencies and instabilities of the Space Wolves' gene-seed, in particular the Canis Helix, in order to create new Successor Chapters. He had come closer than any other since the time of the Emperor Himself at understanding the fundamental nature of the Canis Helix. Unfortunately, during the First Battle of The Fang, Hraldir was forced to confront the Thousand Sons' Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red and was slain by the ancient sorcerer. With Hraldir's death, the secrets of the Space Wolves' gene-seed and how to remove the taint of the Curse of the Wulfen died with him. After the battle, the shattered laboratorium was reconstructed and transformed into the place where the Chapter's various Servitor-Thralls were created and maintained by the Iron Priests. Chamber of the Watch In the upper levels of The Fang is located the Chamber of the Watch, the tactical operations center from which the garrisoning Great Company can oversee the defence of The Fang. Jarlheim High up the mountain but beneath the Valgard, past the huge, shadowy bulwark of the Fangthane, is the Jarlheim, the abode of the Sky Warriors. No mortal Thrall remains on those levels except on the orders of his masters, for it is there that the twelve Great Companies of the Chapter were housed. The halls of the Space Wolves are often empty and silent, since they are ever called away on campaign to some far-flung corner of their galactic protectorate. At least one Great Company always kept the hearths burning, however, tending the sacred flames and paying obeisance to the wards that kept maleficarum from entering The Fang. In the Jarlheim are the warshrines to the fallen, the totems collected by the Rune Priests from far-off worlds, the Armouries full of sacred weaponry. In the holy places, tattered banners from past campaigns are laid to rest amid the dusty rows of skulls, armour and other prizes. When the warning klaxons blare across the demesnes of the twelve Great Companies, the narrow ways are lit with a savage fire -- for when the masters of the mountain have been summoned to service, it is as if the earth itself has been shaken into sentience. The stone reverberates with a deep tremor as the massed wolf-spirits are goaded into life. Armour is strapped on and drilled into place by Thralls, beast pelts reverently draped over the Ceramite, runes daubed on shoulder-guards in thick animal blood, charms hung piously over necks and wound around armoured wrists. Deep within the centre of the maze of shafts, galleries and tunnels, there comes the beating of a great drum. It underpins all other sounds, thumping out a heartbeat rhythm of savagery. Other drums soon join it. The power of the drums' vibrations make the entire labyrinth resonate with a growing crescendo of hatred and pent-up aggression. There are few sights more intimidating in the entire galaxy than a Space Wolf Great Company preparing itself for war. Hall of the Fangthane The Hall of the Fangthane is the chamber that links the Hould and the Jarlheim. It had been delved centrally, right into the inner core of the mountain above the Hould and directly below the landing stages of the Valgard. One of a number of bulwark points within the Aett, it is the only route from one region of the fortress to the next. Any enemy, should they somehow make it inside The Fang at the gate level, would have to pass up through the Fangthane to enter the higher galleries. In a fortress of wonders, the Fangthane has an awe-inspiring quality all of its own. Its walls soars high up into the dark, hundreds of metres, gently curving toward a roof lost in gloom. The entire populace of the Hould, hundreds of thousands of souls, could assemble in its cavernous space, filling the frozen chamber floor. They enter from the west, ascending the huge Stair of Ogvai, lined with images of ancient heroes carved from the mountain-stone and lit by flickering torches. In the chamber itself, images of Fenris had been delved into the walls, each more than fifty metres high and adorned with intricate knotwork. There are symbols of the Great Companies of old – wolfsheads, broken moons, claws, axe-shafts and bleached skulls. Monumental images of Fenris' elemental powers – the Storm-Spirit, the Ice-Bringer, the Thunder-Heart – are picked out in the flickering light. Above them all are the Fenrisian runes, the sacred sigils that channel the soul of the Death World into the sphere of the living and warded against maleficarum -- against daemons and those who trafficked with them. When fully assembled, the ranks of grey-clad men and women who make up the Chapter's population of serfs or Thralls marches between the two massive granite statues of Leman Russ' Fenrisian Wolf brothers Freki and Geri that guard the west gate, each ten metres tall at the shoulder and crouched ready to pounce. Ahead of the assembly area, the chamber stretches away into the distance, vaster than any cathedral, lit only by racks of blood-red fire in braziers of iron as tall as a man. And at the far end, most brightly lit of all, there had once stood the mightiest of the many statues in The Fang, the colossal image of Leman Russ. The size of a ''Warhound''-class Titan, the granite Primarch gazed across the space with a snarl on his craggy features. He had his Frostblade Mjalnar clutched in one hand; the other was clenched into a balled fist. Other Primarchs might have been rendered in a more contemplative pose, but not Russ. He had been carved by the stone-shapers of Fenris as he had been in life: an engine of war, a living god, the living embodiment of the primal urge to kill. During the First Battle of The Fang in the 32nd Millennium, the Thousand Sons' Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red had profaned this sacred chamber and performed the ultimate desecration. In an act reminiscent of the one performed by Russ against Magnus during the Burning of Prospero, the Daemon Primarch ripped the statue of Leman Russ from its foundations and broke its back across his knee. Tomb of the Drekkar High up in the Jarlheim stands a remote chamber, far from the largely inhabited halls. Large enough to house fifty warriors, this remote hall features ancient carvings and houses the skeletal remains of a drekkar, a longship of the Fenrisian tribes. Who hauled it there and why is lost to the mists of time. The chamber came back into use when it was rediscovered by the Wolf Guard Gunnlaugur and since then has been used as the staging chamber for Járnhamar Pack. Hould The Hould is the beating heart of the Aett. The thousands of mortal warriors, craftsmen, technicians and labourers who maintain the massive citadel as Thralls of the Chapter live out their entire lives there. Thralls rarely leave The Fang unless taken out of it by troop transports: the air is thin even for Fenrisian natives at that altitude. Their skin is as pale as the ice that covers the upper slopes, and they are all Fenris-born, of the stock that still roams across the ice-fields below Asaheim and provides the recruits for the Space Wolves. Their breed had been taken into the vast halls of the Aett when the first chambers had been hollowed out, and all could trace their lineages back over thirty generations or more. Only some -- the kaerls -- were kept at arms at all times, but all knew how to wield a blade and fire a skjoldtar, the heavy, armour-piercing projectile weapon similar to an Autogun favoured by the Aettguard, the body of kaerls, committed to the defence of Russ' fortress. They are the children of a Death World, and from the youngest infant to the oldest crone they know the art of killing. Hammerhold Within the Hammerhold, the vast network of the Chapter's forges that lay below the main chambers of the Hould, the sound of hammers resonate everywhere. It runs through the chambers, resounding in the stone, vibrating in the deep shafts, echoing in the hidden vaults. A single bridge of stone, six metres wide and without a rail, crosses the abyss at the core of the mountain and disappears into the gloom and haze of the distance. Hundreds of metres down, in the huge cavern spanned by the bridge, is a vision of Hel. Gigantic, hulking furnaces, each the height of a ''Warlord''-class Titan and twice as wide, throw off clouds of blood-red light. Channels of heat-blackened stone carry rivers of fire from one inferno to the next, passing through wheels of iron and plunging pistons. The silhouettes of Servitor-Thralls, their wire-studded spines curled over from hunching, creep between the colossal machinery, checking flickering pict-readouts and tending brass-lined banks of Cogitators. The vast space hums with a low, rumbling activity. Along clattering conveyor belts amid the forges are the embryonic shells of vehicle plating, artillery barrels, even body armour parts. And then there are the hammers. They are borne by rows of muscle-enhanced, metal-ribbed, faceless Servitors chained to their Adamantium anvils by segmented nerve-conduits, endlessly working. There are ranks upon ranks of them, more machine than human, moulded into mindless golems by the uncaring arts of the fleshmakers. They are the perfect workers: tireless, uncomplaining, hugely strong, content to hammer away in the pits of fire until death from the aging or breakdown of their organic components give them a final release. Arjac's Forge Past the central forges and complexes of the Hammerhold lies a small, unornamented chamber containing a furnace, anvil, racks of tools, a bucket of water, a bin of smelted ingots and nothing more. This unremarkable forge is the personal domain of Arjac Rockfist. Such an indulgence is rare within The Fang but as with many things, Arjac stands apart. Drawn from the forges by his skill at arms and duty to the Great Wolf, this small forge is the one concession to Arjac's peerless skill as a craftsman. Less than a single weapon leaves Arjac's forge each standard year for the final blessings of the Iron Priests, but those that do leave are flawless works of master craftsmanship. Many more works fail to pass Arjac's strict standards and are melted down to become raw ingots once more. Borek's Seal The journey down the many hundred levels from the Valgard at the summit of The Fang to the lower reaches of the Hould takes a long time. The only way to reach this isolated area is by riding a number of turbo-elevators, tramping down several long spiral staircases hewn from the stone and marching across countless rough-cut chambers glowing with the embers of old fires. With every level that passes, the decorations in the rock became less ornate, the glowglobes a little less close together, the voices a little more hushed. At the base of the Hammerhold, buried kilometres down into the rock, is Borek's Seal, the largest of The Fang's innumerable chambers and the gateway to the Underfang. Even more massive than the Hall of the Fangthane, the enormous cavern is a gloomy and shadow-draped place. Just as the Fangthane guards the approaches from the Hould to the Jarlheim, Borek's Seal wards passage to the levels below, the Hammerhold and the half-explored Underfang. It is colossal, the size of a Battleship's hull, though almost empty of decoration and devoid of the pelts, bones and carvings that adorn most chambers of the Aett. The bare rock walls are unfinished and jagged, a reminder of the primal nature of the Space Wolves' ancient origins. A few fires burn low in vast circular pits, but their light is weak and the perma-chill is little disturbed by them. Across the yawning cavern, huge columns support the far-off roof. Each is the width of a Rhino chassis, a shaft of naked rock that glints with points of red from the low flames. No Thrall comes down this far into the mountain, for this was below the Gate level, the limit of the kaerls’ patrol circuits, and beyond it none but the Iron Priests went. Even within the Aett there are dangers. For on Fenris, the Space Wolves do not eliminate the danger on their world, even though they could. They keep it close to them, learn to live with it, using it to keep themselves strong. Underfang The Underfang represented the very bowels of the mountain fortress. It is a universe of stone marked by the increasing heat radiated by the geothermal reactors that provide The Fang with its power and by the ancient Armouries and hidden vaults of the Chapter where the Space Wolves kept their greatest secrets -- and their honoured dead. The Underfang has many perils, some unknown even to the Great Wolf. Halls of the Revered Fallen It takes nearly ten minutes of solid walking to traverse the yawning forge-halls. The bridge over the Forgehold terminated as it reaches a cliff of rough-hewn rock. An iron-lined door had been carved into it, crested with the sign of the two-headed wolf Morkai, the Fenrisian Guardian of the Dead. The image looks old, far older than anything in the Hould, and the edges are smooth from the hot, wearing winds. The doorway is open and there are no guards. A single, isolated green light winks at the base of the heavy frame -- a Disruptor Field. A large corridor lay beyond, wide enough to drive a Rhino through, descending ever deeper into the subterranean levels of The Fang, finally terminating at an extensively worked wall. There sits huge doors in the centre of it, once more crested with the twin faces of Morkai. The space around the doors are studded with arcane machinery –- coils of coolant piping, statuesque clusters of power transformers, lattices of ironwork covering the unidentifiable workings within. Incredibly, given the oppressive cold and distance from maintenance crews of Thralls, the low hum from the machines sound healthy. This is the threshold of the Halls of the Revered Fallen. It is here that the Chapter's honoured ancients, the Dreadnoughts, lay in eternal slumber until awakened for war by the Iron Priests. They are woken from their stasis-like slumbers in the depths of The Fang only in times of direst need, for each of these revered heroes embodies a part of the Chapter's history. The eldest and most revered of their kind lay here as well. He is Bjorn, called the Fell-Handed by the skjalds when declaiming the sagas, the last of the Chapter to have walked the ice with Russ. This Venerable Dreadnought is a living link to the Time of Wonder during the Imperium's golden age ten millennia before. Utility Level At the deepest levels of The Fang, at the base of the region known as the Underfang, lay the massive geothermal generators which provide the great citadel with all of the power required for its operations. This includes the blazing capillaries of magma which bring superheated rock up from the mantle of Fenris to heat the water that provides the fortress' gigantic steam turbines with their motive force. This area of the fortress-monastery is maintained by a legion of Chapter thralls who are sometimes guided in their endeavours by the arcane technomancy of the Iron Priests. History Notable Campaigns *'First Battle for The Fang (Unknown Date.M32)' - Harek Ironhelm was the Chapter's Great Wolf during the 32nd Millennium. Ironhelm sought for many years to bring the Thousand Sons' Primarch Magnus the Red to battle. Several times Magnus appeared to him in visions amongst the ruins of devastated cities that had been laid to ruin by the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion striking from out of the Eye of Terror and taunted the Great Wolf for his inability to stop him. After many fruitless efforts to catch up with the Chaos Space Marines, Harek became obsessed, and took to searching worlds along the edge of the Eye of Terror itself. Eventually he found what he believed to be the Thousand Sons' secret base on the world of Gangava and launched a full-scale planetary assault against it. This was a deception intended to draw the bulk of the Space Wolves' forces from their homeworld, leaving it undefended; for in truth Gangava was held by a Chaos force allied to Magnus but it served only as a distraction, intended to draw the Space Wolves away from their homeworld so that a massive Thousand Sons' fleet could besiege Fenris itself. The Space Wolves' fortress-monastery, The Fang, was held by only a small force of Space Wolves and their Servitor-thralls. The orbital defences were taken out, as well as the few remaining Space Wolves vessels performing void duty. The Thousand Sons had blinded the Chapter's Rune Priests to their coming invasion. Concerned, the Rune Priests knew that the Aett had wards in the stone, hundreds of them. Signs of aversion have been carved into the rock and infused with the world-spirit. No sorcerer could enter there, not even the mightiest of them. There were only six remaining Rune Priests to defend their mighty citadel. Two full Rune Priests and four acolytes whose powers were untried in combat. The Wolf of the Watch, Vaer Greyloc, Jarl of the Twelfth Great Company, led the defence of the Aett from the forces of the Archenemy. For forty days and forty nights the Thousand Sons assaulted the citadel. Bjorn the Fell-Handed, the most ancient of the Space Wolves' Dreadnoughts, was eventually awoken from his long sleep and took charge of the defence. The assault was held at bay by a force of Wolf Scouts as Haakon Blackwing escaped to Gangava to locate Harek. Shamed and furious, Harek Ironhelm returned to meet Magnus in battle on the slopes of the Fang itself. Although Magnus was terribly wounded, even Harek could not stand against the power of a Primarch who had been further exalted to become a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch. Harek was slain, but the Thousand Sons were ultimately defeated and scattered, the Traitor Legion's warbands forced to return to the Planet of the Sorcerers within the Eye of Terror. *'Second Battle for The Fang (Unknown Date.M36)' - During the Age of Apostasy's Plague of Unbelief, Apostate Cardinal Bucharis of Gathalamore launched an invasion of Fenris on his way to Terra. For three years, Bucharis laid siege to the Fang after the Space Wolves' fleet waged furious battles against the Renegade Imperial Navy forces of Bucharis. Some of the Space Wolves' starships managed to break through, such as the cruiser named the Claw of Russ. However, the fighting saw millions of Fenrisians fall to the invaders as the people of Fenris, the Space Wolves and even the Fenrisian Wolves of the wild waged war against their corrupted Chaotic attackers. Despite numerous efforts to break the siege, the Space Wolves could not get through, until returning from a five-year-long expedition to the Eye of Terror, Wolf Lord Kyrl Grimblood and his Great Company smashed through Bucharis' fleet and then launched a devastating assault on the rear of Bucharis' siege forces, killing thousands and sending many fleeing into the wilds of Fenris to die horribly at the claws of the unforgiving creatures and the touch of the deadly weather. With Kyrl's efforts weakening the invaders, the Space Wolves launched a break-out counteroffensive and smashed through their attackers, routing them. Bucharis was forced to flee and while his defeat at the hands of the Space Wolves did not end his reign, others fought against the "Plague of Unbelief" he had unleashed and Bucharis was eventually defeated by a resurgent Imperium. Yet it is due to the efforts of Kyrl Grimblood that the ambitions of the Apostate Cardinal Bucharis were brought to a turning point and the Second Battle for the Fang was won. *'First War for Armageddon and the "Days of Shame'" (444-445.M41)' - The most famous action during the First War for Armageddon was when the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar lead 300 Space Wolves alongside 109 Grey Knights against the Daemon Primarch Angron and a diabolic horde of Khornate Berserkers drawn from the World Eaters Traitor Legion and innumerable daemons. The Imperial forces eventually rose victorious and banished Angron back to the Warp from whence he came. The Space Wolves continued to fight in the First War for Armageddon through to its conclusion. Although they had defeated all that the Forces of Chaos had thrown at them during this bloody campaign, the victorious soldiers of Armageddon were doomed from the start. They had gained knowledge of the existence of Chaos, a forbidden secret of the Imperium, and been exposed to its corruption. The Inquisition had no intention of letting the wider Imperium discover the true nature of the daemonic foe that had attacked Armageddon, or of the ways and means victory had been achieved with the aid of the Grey Knights; the Inquisitors present voted to sterilise and quarantine-for-life the remaining population of the Hive World even though it was generally considered untainted, and ignorant of the truth concerning the existence of Chaos. The valiant Imperial Guard, PDF regiments and other human defenders of the world were to suffer the same fate or be liquidated. The Inquisition ordered all of the people who had fought on the planet, except for the Space Marines, to be rounded up at gunpoint, sterilised to prevent any possible Chaos-induced mutations in their offspring and placed in Adeptus Arbites work camps across the galaxy, with their world to be re-colonised by people from other regions of the galaxy with no knowledge of the war. Over the strident protests of the Space Wolves and their Great Wolf Logan Grimnar, the Inquisition followed through with this plan, and the Grey Knights frigate Karabela still in orbit of Armageddon was ordered to disable the first Imperial Guard troop transport to leave Armageddon as it approached a Warp jump point off-world. Following this first incident, a months-long cat-and-mouse campaign took place between the Space Wolves and their human charges from Armageddon on one side, and the Inquisition and Grey Knights on the other. It was characterised by increasingly deadly fratricidal actions by both sides, and rapidly escalated into a full-fledged Imperial civil war between the Space Wolves and the Inquisition. Grimnar saw the Inquisition's actions following the war as betraying the very people who had honourably fought for their homes and for the Emperor, and if the Imperium did not protect those who fought for it, he did not believe it had any purpose. Finally, in an attempt to bring the conflict to an end, in 445.M41 the Inquisitor Lord Ghesmei Kysnaros ordered his growing Inquisitorial armada, including Grey Knights Chapter fleet vessels, to Fenris, the Space Wolves' lightly defended homeworld, in a last-ditch gambit to force those Astartes to comply with the Inquisition's wishes concerning the liquidation or imprisonment of Armageddon's survivors. Kysnaros' armada, including a multitude of Inquisition warships, Grey Knights vessels, and the entire Chapter fleet and strength of the Red Hunters Space Marine Chapter, arrived at Fenris and surrounded the planet in high orbit whilst targeting The Fang, the Space Wolves' fortress-monastery, for a devastating orbital bombardment. The planet was virtually undefended as the vast majority of the Space Wolves and their Chapter fleet were dispersed on missions across the galaxy. Kysnaros again asked for a parlay with any ranking Space Wolves present. A delegation consisting of Kysnaros, the Grey Knight Hyperion (who commanded respect amongst the Space Wolves as the "Bladebreaker") and Inquisitor Annika Jarlsdottyr, a native Fenrisian, arrived at The Fang for the meeting. The Space Wolves had awoken the Venerable Dreadnought Bjorn the Fell-Handed to deal with the Inquisitorial party. The ancient warrior who had once fought beside the Primarch Leman Russ during the Great Crusade immediately received the unbidden respect and reverence of the Inquisitorial delegation, and was thought to be a more temperate and wise representative for the Chapter than Logan Grimnar. Kysnaros asked for the Space Wolves' express obeisance to Imperial authority and the chain of command, and a Penitent Crusade to be undertaken to expiate the Chapter's guilt for their attacks upon the servants of the Inquisition. In exchange, the Inquisition and the Imperium at large would take no other action or censure against the Chapter. Before negotiations could go further, to the surprise of everyone, the Space Wolves' Chapter fleet under the command of Logan Grimnar translated from the Warp near Fenris. As the Inquisition delegation made haste to their flagship, a short, brutal fight ensued over the planet. Eventually Grimnar and his Wolf Guard teleported to Kysnaros' flagship's bridge, where the Great Wolf unceremoniously beheaded the Inquisitor Lord. Grimnar then proceeded to maul the last survivor of the Grey Knights' Squad Castian who had survived the conflict on Armageddon. To save his brother, Hyperion confronted Grimnar, and in the duel that followed, he used his psychic powers to crack Grimnar's ancient, venerated Frost Axe Morkai. As Hyperion then confronted Grimnar and twenty Space Wolves alone, Bjorn the Fell-Handed teleported to the bridge and put an end to the fight. Bjorn told Grimnar that the internecine war between the Chapter and the Inquisition on behalf of the survivors of Armageddon had to stop. The Inquisitorial force should be allowed to leave Fenris unscathed, and the Space Wolves should reach an understanding with the Imperium. He then addressed Hyperion and Inquisitor Jarlsdottyr, as the ranking Inquisition representatives present, and told them that no Inquisition vessel should ever again appear above Fenris. Additionally, the Space Wolves who had acquired knowledge of the existence of the Grey Knights would not be mind-scrubbed, as was customary, though the remaining Armageddon survivors would be handed over for mind-wiping and dispersion across the galaxy. The Inquisition accepted the terms, and shortly afterward, the Inquisitorial force left the system. Yet, as a result of what they continued to believe was a betrayal of the Imperium's core values, the Space Wolves have never again trusted the Inquisition and move to frustrate Inquisitorial designs at every opportunity. Since this time the Space Wolves have had little but hostility to show towards the Inquisition and few indeed are the Inquisitors allowed into The Fang in recent times. Sources *''Codex: Space Wolves'' (7th Edition), pp. 9, 12, 16-17, 22, 27-28, 50, 52, 61, 65, 67-69 *''Codex: Space Wolves - Wulfen Editon'' (7th Edition), pp. 8-9, 11, 14, 17-18, 25, 29, 31-33 *''Codex: Space Wolves'' (5th Edition), pg. 13 *''Codex: Space Wolves'' (2nd Edition), pg. 43 *''Codex: Sisters of Battle'' (2nd Edition) pp. 39-40 *''Battle of the Fang'' (Novel) by Chris Wraight *''Prospero Burns'' (Novel) by Dan Abnett *''The Emperor's Gift'' (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden es:El Colmillo Category:F Category:Imperial Technology Category:Imperium Category:Space Marines Category:Space Wolves Category:Fortifications